Just Like Before
by raven2547
Summary: For Mariagoner. Wes and Kendall reignite their old flame.


**This is a present for Mariagoner! She wanted me to try my hand at some Wes/Kendall. I must confess it has been years since I've written het and those few I wrote were terrible and… just terrible XD **

**This will mess with your minds if you're not on my same page. I was already planning this story before she asked but I really didn't like the OC I came up with—but I'd never thought to use Kendall! I'm really happy she gave me that option. **

**In this story, for background, Wes is 33, Travis is roundabouts that area as well, and Kendall is 29.**

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_10 years ago; 7000 Dallas Ave_

"We can make it work. It's really not that far away! We'll still have phone calls and visits, holidays, birthdays… it'll just be for a little while," a younger Wesley Mitchell said sadly, but resignedly. He faced a redheaded girl with a roguishly short pixie cut. He hadn't originally liked the idea of her chopping off her beautiful long hair, but it grew on him.

"Wes, we've seen movies. Long distance relationships never work. You're going to law school here in California and I'm moving to Colorado. It won't work. I can't expect you to put your life on hold and you can't make me, either. It's not fair to either of us," an equally younger Kendall, 19, looked crushed at her boxes and bags packed by the door to their small apartment. Moving in with her boyfriend from high school had seemed so right at the time. Neither of them could have predicted that after the short time they'd had together that they would have to split up.

The next day she'd been gone and he'd been alone. Two weeks later he met a girl named Alex. A year later he married the lawyer-to-be while still on the rebound from Kendall. Seven years after that, the relationship he'd built on top of false feelings was finally ended, but his loneliness threatened to overtake him.

He almost shot his best friend.

Mere weeks after the therapy started, she was back.

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_Present day; Los Angeles, California_

She was a breath of fresh air. Almost too hard to look at. Her hair had changed from the pixie cut, but it wasn't as long as it used to be. And Travis was flirting with her. Wes wondered to himself whether it was fate that they'd met again after all these years. She'd changed out her thick rimmed glasses for contacts and had grown into her skin.

And Travis was flirting with her.

Wes quickly put a stop to that and, under the guise of getting coffee, ventured down to the digital technology wing. Travis said he thought the 'new girl' liked him. Wes could only hope that was true—he couldn't deny that he still loved her. He was never one to believe in soul mates, but after the long road he'd been down even he could see that she had always been the one.

The door was propped open with a stopper, so he knocked on it. Kendall was the only one in the room and her head turned, an inquisitive look on her face. The expression faded rather quickly and she closed out of whatever she'd been doing and put her computer to sleep.

"Hey," he said, trying to sound mysterious and flirty like he used to. It came out kind of raspy, not sultry. Damn it.

"Hi," They shared an awkward look.

"So-uh"

"Listen"

Wes smashed a hand over his face and huffed a laugh while Kendall cracked a smile. Wes flung a hand out and gestured for her to go first. She cleared her throat.

"You, uh, you're a cop," she started out bluntly. Last she'd seen or heard of him, he'd been a lawyer. The last time she'd inquired about him he'd been dating again. She herself had found a boy nearer to her age and thought he'd moved on. Kendall could never forget the man who spotted her in the freshman corner of the lunchroom on the first day of school and offered her a chance to go to the welcome dance with a senior track star. And when she refused, he pestered her for all the months leading up to the winter formal. Five years together and then the terrible break they'd taken from each other.

After all these years and countless friends telling her it was a _break_ up not just a break, Kendall still couldn't bare to think of their split as a goodbye. Neither of them had wanted to leave each other, but it had to happen.

"I am. Detective, actually. And you are tech support, just what you wanted," he gave a sardonic smile.

They talked some more after that and he eventually just pulled up a chair to her desk. People gradually flooded back into the room and tried not to gape at the Ice King Wes Mitchell conversing with the new girl like they'd known each other for ages. He was leaning on her desk with crossed arms and they were laughing together. Eventually he looked at the clock and made a face that said 'this is just preposterous…' and stood up.

"I'm going to have to cut our meeting short. I'll call you, ok? We're going to do something. Just like old times. I promise, it'll be just like before," and with that mysterious remark, they watched as he smiled really largely at her and left the room.

Strangely, the new girl didn't comment back to him and just waved. She actually twirled her hair around her pen and stared out the door after him before jumping and looking back at her computer.

Well then.

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Wes called her at 7 o'clock that night and they made plans for 'a surprise'. His excited voice over the phone had made her smile and remember what it had been like dating a younger Wes. From the questioning she'd received after he'd left her room, he was just the most uptight and cold person in the precinct. Her Wes (was he still hers after all this time? She was definitely still his) had never been in the least bit cold. He'd actually been like that guy, Travis, who'd she had played the MMORPG with. So funny and frat-boyish. He'd been growing out of it when they broke up though. Maybe this was the new Wes?

He'd been so much like he was back then when they talked, though. He'd laughed (God, how she'd missed his laugh), smiled (his pretty smile), made jokes and talked with her. They'd spent so much time catching up that she felt like she'd never left her role as best friend.

The door buzzer rang and instead of calling him up she just put on her coat and went downstairs. He told her to wear something she'd be comfortable exercising in so she wore a tank top and shorts with her running shoes.

Kendall took the stairs two at a time, three flights to the bottom, and halted right before the lobby to catch her breath and smooth her hair back into its neat pony-tail. He was standing there in an old wind breaker with his knees showing from the hanging shorts and big sneakers. But terrible, argyle socks that went to nearly to his knee. She could only imagine her face because he was making the same at her.

"_Where_ in the world did you find those things?"

"Why aren't you wearing long socks?"

She sighed and stomped back up the stairs while he laughed after her. Quickly she put on some thick knee-high socks and ran back downstairs.

Finally they were in his car and on their way. Wes handed her a black strip of cloth and she looked at him askance.

"Are you taking me to the woods to axe murder me? I was so sure you were a good guy. You know I still carry my knife. I'm not afraid of prison," she said quickly. He had actually been the one to give her the huge knife as well as a can of mace for her high school graduation party. She still had the mace, as well, because nobody tried to jump you when you looked like you were just released on good behavior.

"I thought we always agreed you were the crazy one?" He said, kind of curious.

"You may have snapped while I've been away. Pining away those celibate hours and all that. I thought you liked me like that?"

"Oh yes. I do like the crazy ones," they were playing with each other again. It had always been Wes's friends' joke to tell him how redheads were insane and she was just more so. The longer they dated the more focused his friends had seemed to get. In hindsight, their first real date (after the dance) was to a shooting range. He had taught her how to fire a shotgun and she showed him that she already knew how. In the competition that ensued out of both of them, she claimed the girls' high score for skeet shooting and Wes had received an award for most bulls-eyes in a session. It had been a great first date.

Kendall covered her eyes with the blindfold and soon enough they pulled to a stop. Wes came around and opened her door, then took her elbow and led her into an air-conditioned building. A whispered conversation followed and then he was strapping something around her shins and elbows, putting what felt like a bandana around her neck, pushing gloves on her hands—heavy duty, black, fingerless gloves—and a thick helmet on her face. She could hear him preparing himself the same way.

Wes grabbed her elbow again and pulled her along back into the dry California heat. The door swished shut and then a handle was pressed to her hand—she grabbed it immediately—and her blindfold was taken off just as some guy on a loud-speaker shouted, "Go!"

Suddenly she was standing alone. Wes had totally run away from her. Kendall looked down at the handle and turned it over while stepping behind a foam barrier. It was a gun. A paintball gun. Their third, fifth, and twelfth date were coming out to play, then.

Briefly, she remembered shooting Wes and hitting him on his face-mask. Blue paint had splattered all over his view screen and she'd been laughing when some guy dressed in orange shot her three times in the heart area.

At the end, she and Wes had both lost and were terribly out of breath but they were laughing and she was hugging him and touching him for the first time in eight years. It was wonderful.

He left her on her welcome mat outside her door at 10 o'clock, both covered in spatters of green, blue, and red paint. When he leaned in to kiss her, instead of her lips like she wanted he grazed her cheek and breezed back to her ear to whisper.

"Just like before, I told you so," then he chuckled lowly in her ear and tried to walk away but she grabbed his still slightly wet shirt and dragged him through her open door to her dark apartment.

They'd known each other long enough and wasted enough time apart to take things slow.

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**First het in years. Tell me what you people think and I won't feel so cheap about it :\ **

**Also, I really hope Mariagoner loves her present! It was fun to write and I finally got Wes paintballing out of my head. **

**If you liked, review, favorite, or follow :3 **


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